Laura Walker Hudson

Chief Executive Officer, Social Impact Lab Foundation

Laura Walker Hudson supports organizations around the world to use mobile technology to transform their work. Drawing on her expertise in humanitarian aid, human rights law and international development, she brings a cross-disciplinary approach to communications, innovation and information management.

Social Impact Lab are the makers of FrontlineSMS, award-winning open-source software used in over 135 countries.

Laura leads on financial management, communications, and strategic planning for SIMLab. She writes and speaks about their work, and mobile for social change more generally, contributing to technical resources and journals with understandings of good practice in applied mobile communications, with a particular focus on humanitarian aid, and quality and accountability.

Before coming to SIMLab, Laura worked for the British Red Cross on international humanitarian policy and learning, focussed on quality and accountability, innovation, urbanization, cash transfer programming and civil-military relations, as well as strategic planning. Laura also served for three years as Secretary of the NGO-Military Contact Group. She is a member of the Advisory Board of SpaceUnited, is a former Steering Group member for Enhancing Learning and Research in Humanitarian Action (ELRHA), and remains a member of the Communicating with Disaster Affected Communities (CDAC) reference group.

Laura is also a committed activist for the rights of the UK's Gypsy and Traveller community, and holds an LL.B (Hons) in Law, French and German from the University of the West of England, Bristol, and an LL.M in International Development Law and Human Rights from Warwick University.